Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Lindsay McBride

Constructor: Lindsay McBride

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Nice truck..." — actually, PICK-UP LINE (59A: "Come here often?," e.g. ... or a hint to 17-, 30-, 35- and 43-Across); all the answers are "lines" (i.e. things one might say) regarding picking someone / something up:

Theme answers:

"IT'S MY TREAT" (17A: 59-Across from someone who's paying?)
"ANSWER THE PHONE!" (30A: 59-Across from an anxious caller?)
"CLEAN YOUR ROOM!" (35A: 59-Across from a frustrated parent?)
"DO YOU NEED A RIDE?" (43A: 59-Across from a carpooler?)

Word of the Day: THE G.O.A.T. (23A: Acronymic title for a legendary athlete) —

Not many people can claim to be the G.O.A.T., but those who can are the Greatest Of All Time in their field. Most often, the acronym G.O.A.T. praises exceptional athletes but also musicians and other public figures.
On social media, it’s common to see the goat 🐐 emoji in punning relation to the acronym. (dictionary.com)

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This is one of those puzzles where the themer clues are basically begging you to go down and start at the bottom, with the revealer, so that's what I did. Solving a bunch of longer answers completely through crosses, with no idea why they are what they are, isn't particularly fun, so I went down and worked my way to PICK-UP LINE, and then the themers I got after that were not just befuddling unclued (or ... preclued) phrases. The revealer payoff wasn't dramatic, but it worked well enough. Take a familiar phrase (PICK-UP LINE) and reorient it in a bunch of different ways–a line about picking up the tab, a line about picking up the phone, etc. It's textbook stuff, really. Not exciting, a little bit corny, but smooth and neatly executed, and no cornier than most pun-driven themes. None of the theme phrases feel forced (the way they sometimes can when you're trying to make them come out as a symmetrical set). In short, the theme is just fine. The puzzle played harder than normal (for me) partly because of the theme (i.e. the clues are all cross-referenced, so you had to piece them together with part of the clue missing), and partly because of trivia, specifically names, specifically two names I didn't know, specifically two names I didn't know that come from The Exact Same Field—two Olympic athletes. Names are a fine and necessary part of puzzles, but ... it's always nice when the clues bother to broaden the range of those names. Two names from a very narrow area ... not great editing. I'm just getting hammered lately by LEE clues. Didn't know LEE Shubert the other day, didn't know Suni LEE today. I'm fairly sure I've actually seen ELAINE Thompson-Herah in the puzzle before. I have a vague memory of making her my Word of the Day. But that didn't help today. So ... theme, names, and then a lot of "could be a bunch of things"-type clues made this one slow(er) going for me. But not rough. Just slow.

Got EBB/ELIOT quickly, right off the bat, and thought I was going to start flying, but then LEE got involved and wow BE SEEN was not my friend (3D: Appear in public). Needed every cross. Had BESEEM at some point and thought "well that's ... quaint." Clue on MAGS was a tough one (esp. since I only ever see the abbr. MAGS in crosswords) (18D: They have issues, in brief). My students TURN IN assignments all the time, and increasingly they do this electronically, which may be why I went with TURN IN and not HAND IN. We even have software called "Turnitin"—it's semi-evil surveillance software that identifies all the parts of a student's paper that are taken from other sources. It's a way to catch plagiarizers (the plagiarism arms race, don't get me started ... I did not get into this field so I could be a cop; at this point, I just go over proper citation methods, explain the zero tolerance cheating policy, and then turn the policing over to the machines. I also craft weird assignments that make plagiarism a near impossibility, though with the new AI, who the **** knows...). So I tripped over HAND IN, then tripped over "UM, NO" (had "UH, NO"). Then really tripped over I.T. PRO (had I.T. GUY ... which made it look like I was going to get GIPSY (!?!!?) at 22D: Certain itinerant musician (PIPER), which had me going "oh ... no no no don't be that." And it wasn't!).

The only answer I really hated today was NO SPIN—that was the slogan of a ONETIME right-wing talk show host, so ... barf. Actually, I think technically it was the name of a segment (maybe?) on his show: the "NO SPIN Zone." Or maybe that's just what he called his show (I'm not bothering to look it up). The very claim "NO SPIN!" reeks of fraud, like ... it's the thing you would claim if you were actually the spinniest spinner who ever spun. "NO SPIN!" "Oh, shut up, spinner." NO SPIN was also just hard to parse, and hard + repugnant is pretty much the worst combo you can encounter as a solver. That FROND clue is pretty awful, but in that semi-charming way that bad puns are awful, so keep the FROND clue, ditch NO SPIN entirely, I say. I had LOYALIST before LOYAL (space) FAN (36D: Die-hard follower), so there was yet another way that my progress was measurably impeded. We got the rare ONO/ENO Daily Double today. That means you've got to drink! (it's time for ONO/ENO, the world's slowest drinking game!). I love (love!) that ALI comes directly after THE GOAT in the Acrosses, since one of the first times I ever encountered the G.O.A.T. acronym was in a Taschen bookstore where they had a giant book on display, all about Muhammad ALI. Its title: GOAT! I thought, "what a weird thing to call him." Now I get it.